The Women Film Critics Circle has announced its 2O15 unique nominations for the best movies this year by and about women. And outstanding achievements by women, who rarely get to be honored historically in the film world.
The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 75 women film critics and scholars from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and TV broadcast media.
They came together in 2004 to form the first women critics’ organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully. WFCC also prides itself on being the most culturally and racially diverse critics group in the country by far, and best reflecting the diversity of movie audiences.
Critical Women On Film, a presentation of The Women Film Critics Circle, is their journal of discussion and theory. And a gathering of women’s voices expressing a fresh and differently experienced perspective from the primarily male dominated film criticism world.
BEST MOVIE ABOUT WOMEN
Carol
Mustang
Suffragette
The Keeping Room
BEST MOVIE BY A WOMAN
Diary Of A Teenage Girl: Marielle Heller
Mustang: Deniz Gamze Erguven
Suffragette: Sarah Gavron
The Second Mother: Anna Muylaert
BEST WOMAN STORYTELLER [Screenwriting Award]
Carol: Phyllis Nagy
Mustang: Deniz Gamze Erguven, Alice Winocour
Room: Emma Donoghue
Suffragette: Abi Morgan
BEST ACTRESS
Alicia Vikander: Testament Of Youth
Carey Mulligan: Suffragette
Cate Blanchett: Carol
Charlotte Rampling: 45 Years
BEST ACTOR
Abraham Attah: Beasts Of No Nation
Andrew Garfield: 99 Homes
Bryan Cranston: Trumbo
Eddie Redmayne: The Danish Girl
BEST YOUNG ACTRESS
Bel Powley: Diary Of A Teenage Girl
Brie Larson: Room
Dakota Fanning: Effie Gray
Saoirse Ronan: Brooklyn
BEST COMEDIC ACTRESS
Amy Schumer: Trainwreck
Greta Gerwig: Mistress America
Maggie Smith: Lady In the Van
Melissa McCarthy: Spy
BEST FOREIGN FILM BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Difret
Dukhtar
Mustang
The Second Mother
BEST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Carol
Mad Max: Fury Road
Suffragette
Testament Of Youth
WORST FEMALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Everly: All the women
Jurassic World: Bryce Dallas Howard
Fifty Shades Of Grey: Dakota Johnson
Trumbo: Helen Mirren
BEST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Bridge Of Spies
Lady In The Van
Mr. Holmes
Trumbo
WORST MALE IMAGES IN A MOVIE
Magic Mike XXL
Steve Jobs
Suffragette
The Big Short
BEST THEATRICALLY UNRELEASED MOVIE BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Bessie
Sworn Virgin
The Book Of Negroes
The Dressmaker
WOMEN’S WORK/BEST ENSEMBLE
Carol
Grandma
Suffragette
The Second Mother
SPECIAL MENTION AWARDS
COURAGE IN FILMMAKING:
Angelina Jolie: By The Sea
Sarah Gavron: Suffragette
COURAGE IN ACTING [Taking on unconventional roles that radically redefine the images of women on screen]
Brie Larson: Room
Julianne Moore: Freeheld
THE INVISIBLE WOMAN AWARD: [Performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored]
Julianne Moore: Freeheld
Alicia Vikander: The Danish Woman
BEST DOCUMENTARY BY OR ABOUT WOMEN
Amy
He Named Me Malala
India’s Daughter
What Happened, Miss Simone?
BEST SCREEN COUPLE
45 Years: Charlotte Rampling/Tom Courtenay
Freeheld: Julianne Moore/Ellen Page
Iris: Iris Apfel/Albert Maysles
Room: Brie Larson/Jacob Tremblay
BEST FEMALE ACTION HERO
Mad Max: Charlize Theron
Sicario: Emily Blunt
Suffragette: Carey Mulligan
The Keeping Room: Brit Marling
MOMMIE DEAREST WORST SCREEN MOM OF THE YEAR AWARD
Cinderella: Cate Blanchett
Diary Of A Teenage Girl: Kristen Wiig
ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: For a film that most passionately opposes violence against women
He Named Me Malala
India’s Daughter
JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: For best expressing the woman of color experience in America
The Keeping Room: Muna Otaru
What Happened, Miss Simone?
KAREN MORLEY AWARD: For best exemplifying a woman’s place in history or society, and a courageous search for identity
Learning To Drive
Suffragette
ADRIENNE SHELLY AWARD: Adrienne Shelly was a promising actress and filmmaker who was brutally strangled in her apartment in 2006 at the age of forty by a construction worker in the building, after she complained about noise. Her killer tried to cover up his crime by hanging her from a shower rack in her bathroom, to make it look like a suicide. He later confessed that he was having a “bad day.” Shelly, who left behind a baby daughter, had just completed her film Waitress, which she also starred in, and which was honored at Sundance after her death.
JOSEPHINE BAKER AWARD: The daughter of a laundress and a musician, Baker overcame being born black, female and poor, and marriage at age fifteen, to become an internationally acclaimed legendary performer, starring in the films Princess Tam Tam, Moulin Rouge and Zou Zou. She also survived the race riots in East St. Louis, Illinois as a child, and later expatriated to France to escape US racism. After participating heroically in the underground French Resistance during WWII, Baker returned to the US where she was a crusader for racial equality. Her activism led to attacks against her by reporter Walter Winchell who denounced her as a communist, leading her to wage a battle against him. Baker was instrumental in ending segregation in many theaters and clubs, where she refused to perform unless integration was implemented.
KAREN MORLEY AWARD: Karen Morley was a promising Hollywood star in the 1930s, in such films as Mata Hari and Our Daily Bread. She was driven out of Hollywood for her leftist political convictions by the Blacklist and for refusing to testify against other actors, while Robert Taylor and Sterling Hayden were informants against her. And also for daring to have a child and become a mother, unacceptable for female stars in those days. Morley maintained her militant political activism for the rest of her life, running for Lieutenant Governor on the American Labor Party ticket in 1954. She passed away in 2003, unrepentant to the end, at the age of 93.
